Iconography and Art (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arturo Pascual Soto.

This is an abstract from the "Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 2" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Si bien el culto al soberano no podría expresar de mejor manera el carácter sagrado que se le confería de antiguo y el extraordinario poder que se concentraba en su persona, es en El Tajín cuando evoluciona sobre las bases de una ideología de reciente introducción hacia una liturgia ligada a una tradición cultural que en el Epiclásico...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katharine Fernstrom.

Two- and three-dimensional human figures, and disembodied parts of figures, are commonly found across North America, and are considered important dimensions of Native American art. Figures appear in diverse media and sizes including stone, copper, shell, earthen effigy mounds, and petroglyphs/petrographs. In the literature, they are most frequently addressed as examples of art for the regions in which they are found, but rarely as pan-North American phenomena. A solely regional perspective...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mario Millones.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The critical role of emotions in any social framework is a problematic element to address from the archaeological record. The nuances of nonverbal communication preceded articulated language and the production of any other communication record in the human species. Behavioral studies, supported by neuroanatomical registration, allow the detailed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Englehardt. Michael Carrasco.

This is an abstract from the "Coffee, Clever T-Shirts, and Papers in Honor of John S. Justeson" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, we honor John Justeson’s contributions to the study of Mesoamerican writing and symbolic systems by revisiting the Epi-Olmec corpus of Classic period Cerro de las Mesas (300–900 CE). Four of the stelae from this site contain examples of the Epi-Olmec script, and their accompanying iconographic programs make...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Strauss.

Epi-Olmec is a nebulous term, adrift in both time and space. Weakly defined by a set of slippery contrasts - isolated from what came before and what comes after - the descriptor lacks robust categorization of its own. And yet in spite of this hollow terminology, the words "Epi-Olmec" themselves are so politically fraught that certain scholars have adopted the even more obfuscatory term "Isthmian", a label growing in popularity within the literature. This paper begins the process of defining...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Antonino Crisà.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The project "Token Communities in the Ancient Mediterranean", held at the University of Warwick, is currently examining token production on a wide scale, assessing new finds from European museums. Roman "tesserae" (tokens) may be defined as monetiform objects produced and used instead of money in specific civic contexts. As a Research Fellow in the on-going...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kim Ruf.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Using Costa Rican precolumbian jade, jadeite, and greenstone artifacts from the collections of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography, this study aims to amplify and widen the range of research carried out on the Isthmo-Colombian Area. It particularly seeks to examine and discuss the role of those objects as indicators of rank and prestige as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Ladron De Guevara.

The deities of El Tajin seem to share a characteristic scroll eyebrow in bas reliefs as well as in mural paintings. I will follow the representation of such an icon, trying to recognize posible origins, the outreach of the element and the symbolic associations in Mesoamerican time and space.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Florence.

The Central Mexican city of Teotihuacan rose to prominence in the last century BC and lasted for six centuries The civic plan was arranged around two main perpendicular avenues lined with temples and public monuments. By the third century AD, the population was housed in apartment compounds. On the walls were murals depicting ornately dressed administrators, armor-clad warriors, and fantastic creatures. These murals were the birthplace of the Feathered Serpent. My research proposes that the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeff Kowalski.

This is an abstract from the "Tales of the Feathered Serpent: Refining Our Understanding of an Enigmatic Mesoamerican Being" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At Uxmal, Yucatán, monumental plumed snakes appear in the sculptural program of the Main Ballcourt and Nunnery Quadrangle. These feathered serpents express complex concepts connected to their pan-Mesoamerican role as a demiurge associated with dawning light, life force, and cosmic order...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Darren Longman. John Pohl.

This is an abstract from the "Tales of the Feathered Serpent: Refining Our Understanding of an Enigmatic Mesoamerican Being" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Feathered Serpent iconography among Mixtec, Zapotec, Chontal, and Huave ethnic groups of Oaxaca, Mexico indicates that its sociopolitical and religious roles are concomitant with an investment in mythological landscapes and spiritually active ritual environments. Our approach to hybrid serpents...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Geoffrey McCafferty.

This is an abstract from the "Tales of the Feathered Serpent: Refining Our Understanding of an Enigmatic Mesoamerican Being" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Polychrome pottery from the Greater Nicoya region of Central America prominently features ‘feathery serpents’ that have been associated with the Mixteca-Puebla tradition of greater Mesoamerica. A closer look at the variety of ‘feathery serpents’ has discriminated between more Borgia-like images...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julia Guernsey. Andrew D. Turner. Michael Love.

Pedestal sculptures featuring supernatural felines with cacao drupes projecting from their foreheads dotted the Late Formative landscape of the Pacific slope and adjacent Guatemalan Highlands. In this paper we consider the implications of the replication of this sculptural form, its role in articulating an elite agenda linked to the production of cacao, and its pertinence to sites of varying scale and relative regional authority. A similar suite of meanings engaged with cacao and supernatural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katie McElfresh Buford. Billie Follensbee.

This is an abstract from the "Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 1" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Among the most diagnostic sculptures made by the Gulf Coast Olmec is the tabletop altar/throne. This sculpture is best known for its most common features: a wide, heavy cornice; a generally rectangular structure; and often, a niche in the front. Given the tabletop form, scholars originally interpreted these sculptures as altars, but...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Annick J. E. Daneels.

This is an abstract from the "Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 2" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The god Xipe Totec has been mostly analyzed from Postclassic evidence (Toltec and Aztec). He is recognized by the representations of a person wearing the skin of a flayed victim or the victim himself. While both types of figures appear in several regions of Mesoamerica, their contexts vary. In this paper I will review Classic and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Oswaldo Chinchilla.

This is an abstract from the "The Flower World: Religion, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Mesoamerica and the American Southwest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the richest repertoires of Mesoamerican flower imagery comes from the Pacific coast of Guatemala. In this paper, I trace the temporal variations in religious beliefs and imagery related to portentous places of beauty known that modern scholars designated as "flower worlds." Lush...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Cordova.

This is an abstract from the "The Flower World: Religion, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Mesoamerica and the American Southwest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Colonial Mexican portraits of priests, nuns, and children donning elaborate floral trappings indicate their subjects’ holiness and connect Euro-Christian and Mesoamerican ideas of sacredness, nobility, and a propitious afterlife. Their rich visual display explicitly highlights the virtuousness...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Houston.

This is an abstract from the "The Movement of People and Ideas in Eastern Mesoamerica during the Ninth and Tenth Centuries CE: A Multidisciplinary Approach Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For close to a century, a remarkable set of shells have been found archaeologically across the Maya region and beyond. Most likely shaped and incised in a single workshop, they present a decided paradox, depicting specific warriors and elites yet, on these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Frank Reilly.

This is an abstract from the "Art Style as a Communicative Tool in Archaeological Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. I suggest that at some point in the development of the Braden art style that the 3D flint-clay statuettes (AD 1100–1175) take the place of the earlier Braden-style paintings (AD 900–1000) found in caves and rockshelters, while temples (BBB Motor Site) that house the flint-clay statuettes substitute for the caves that housed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Coltman. Karl Taube.

This is an abstract from the "Tales of the Feathered Serpent: Refining Our Understanding of an Enigmatic Mesoamerican Being" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Most representations of the feathered serpent at Chichen Itza depict a plumed rattlesnake, a being of wind and carrier of rain, with Central Mexican origins dating back to Early Classic Teotihuacan. In Classic Maya art, feathered serpents are not rattlesnakes and lack plumage aside from a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Viola Koenig.

This is an abstract from the "After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Scholars have always believed that maps and cartographiies did exist in preconquest Mesoamerica. The large amount of early colonial Native maps seems to be evidence for such geographic media. But as yet, no pre-Hispanic lienzos and maps have become known. However, the earliest lienzos do show pre-Hispanic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carl Gellert.

This is an abstract from the "Current Issues in Japanese Archaeology (2019 Archaeological Research in Asia Symposium)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1985, archaeologists excavating Fujinoki Kofun opened for the first time the tomb’s sealed burial chamber. They were surprised to discover that not only had the site been undisturbed by tomb robbers, but that it contained one of the most lavish collections of grave-goods to have been recovered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alanna Radlo-Dzur.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A distinctive tradition of intricately sculpted metates—commonly known as grinding stones—flourished along the Pacific coast of Nicaragua and Costa Rica circa 300-900 CE. The Greater Nicoya burials that contain carved metates often include grave goods made of precious materials such as jade and gold. As a result, these sites have been subject to looting since...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chantal Huckert.

This is an abstract from the "The Precolumbian Dotted-Diamond-Grid Pattern: References and Techniques" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Various researches report that the diamond, rhomboid, and square-gridded patterns and their stepped variants designate the surface of the earth as the fecund female progenitor, manifested in flowers, corn cobs, and sweet, nurturing waters. These patterns also designate the zoomorphic aspects of the shell or skin of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaylee Spencer. Maline Werness-Rude.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Narratives featuring the Maize God are well represented on Classic Maya ceramics. Appearing with numerous other characters and plants in underworld settings, this deity is abundantly documented in scholarly literature. Despite his ubiquity in ancient imagery, the Maize God remains a slippery creature, with an identity that overlaps with other supernaturals. ...